B2B (single store): Creating and assigning initial price rules

You must decide which of your existing contracts (store default contracts, base contracts, and customer contracts) to switch to price rules. Then you must create the price rules and assign them to the appropriate contracts.

If you plan to use price rules for all new customer contracts going forward, but you do not want to switch over any existing store, base, or customer contracts to use price rules, you can skip this entire procedure. Your store is ready to use price rules for new contracts. If you do want to switch over certain contracts to price rules, be aware of the following rules:
  • You can leave any contract to use its existing pricing term if you do not want to switch that contract to use price rules. An existing pricing term is one that existed before Commerce+ Version 7 Feature Pack 2 (that is, any pricing term other than a price rule).
  • If you do assign a price rule to a contract, the price rule overrides any existing pricing term that the contract has. For example, if the contract used the Commerce+ Accelerator catalog filter to adjust prices by a percentage, the price rule you assign will override that pricing term. Note that in this case, the Commerce+ Accelerator catalog filter will continue to filter the catalog for this contract.

    Commerce Lab offers a catalog filtering function that you can use as an alternative to the Commerce+ Accelerator catalog filter. For more information, see Catalog filtering

  • If a contract is not assigned a price rule, but the contract refers to a base contract that is assigned a price rule, then the base contract's price rule overrides any existing pricing terms, in either contract.

Before you begin

Read the following topics and refer to them throughout this procedure, paying particular attention to the contract modelling examples in the second link:

Step 1: Create a price rule for the store default contract

This price rule must set prices for catalog entries available to guest and unregistered customers, and customers with no other contract. You create price rules in Commerce Lab.

Procedure

Create a price rule using the following tasks as reference:

Step 2: Assign the price rule to the store default contract

Using Commerce+ Accelerator, you can access a Price Rule tab in which you can select the price rule to use for your store default contract.

Procedure

  1. Open Commerce Lab Tools.
  2. From the left navigation menu, click Business tools > Customer Management > Contracts.
  3. From the store filter, select the store for which you wish to assign a price rule.
  4. You can assign the price rule while creating a new contract.
    1. Click New.
    2. Go to Catalog filter and price rule to assign the price rule for the selected store contract.
  5. To assign the price rule to an existing contract:
    1. Click the Edit icon given in the same row of the contract name.
    2. On the edit page, go to Catalog filter and price rule to add or update the price rule for the selected store contract.
  6. Click Save.

Step 3: Create price rules for any existing base or customer contracts that you want to switch to price rules

For each individual base and customer contract, decide whether you want to use a price rule or continue using the existing pricing terms. Then create the price rules you need. You can use the same price rule for more than one contract.

Procedure

Create a price rule using the following tasks as reference:

Step 4: Assign price rules to existing base or customer contracts

Using Commerce+ Accelerator, you must open each contract and then select the price rule to assign as an extended term and condition. After you assign the price rule to the contract, customers shopping under the contract are entitled to prices set by the price rule.

Procedure

  1. Open Commerce Lab tools.
  2. From the left navigation menu, go to Business tools > Customer Management > Customer Accounts.
  3. Select the store from the Store filter.
  4. Select the account that has a contract you want to assign the Price Rule to, and then click the contract number provided in Contract column.
  5. Click the Edit icon from the Actions menu. The Edit Contract page opens.
  6. On theEdit Contract page, click the Catalog filter and price rule.
  7. From the price rule drop-down, select the price rule to assign to the contract.
  8. Click Save.

Step 5: Test your results

Procedure

  1. Log on to the store as a customer entitled to each contract that you switched to a price rule, and check that the prices you see are valid.
    This ensures that the new price rules are working as expected.
  2. If you are satisfied with the results of each new price rule, consider removing the existing pricing term from the contract.
    A price rule always overrides an existing pricing term; however, if you do not plan to revert back to the existing pricing term in the future, remove it as part of your clean-up activities.
  3. Log on to the store as a customer entitled to each contract that you did not switch to price rules, and check that the prices you see are valid.
    This ensures that the existing pricing terms are still working as expected.